End of the Spear

I just saw the movie End of the Spear. I can't stop thinking about it. I came away with several things from the movie...one was knowledge. I had some inkling of what the movie would be about from Elisabeth Elliott's point of view. I have heard her talk in person although I don't ever remember reading Through the Gates of Splendor which is Elisabeth's account of it.

This movie was from Steve Saints point of view. Steve was 5 when he told his father goodbye. His father, and 4 other missionary men where going to make contact with the Waodani. The Waodani were very violent, so much so that they were killing each other off. This was why Nate Saint felt such an urgent need to meet them and tell them of God. All seemed to be going well when a miscommunication caused the tribe members to come back and spear the men and all were killed.

What amazes me is that at least two of the women stayed...maybe more, but two were in the story. I would have taken my children and gone home. Elisabeth Elliott goes with her daughter and Rachel Saint, Steve Saint's sister and LIVES WITH the men who killed their family. Then the Saint family comes and stays awhile. There were times when their lives were in danger but they stayed. I can hardly think of it.

The tribe eventually accepts Christ and Rachel continues to live with them until her death in 1994. Steve Saint returns to bury his aunt with the Waodani people and they ask HIM to stay with them. Also, Mincaye, the very one who killed Nate Saint, takes Steve to the very place where the murders occur and Mincaye, now a Christian, gives Steve the chance to take revenge for his father's death, for Mincaye cannot live with the guilt. Steve and Mincaye both end up crying on the ground for the pain in their hearts. Mincaye tells Steve that his father, Nate, was a special man. He says he saw the moment Nate.."jumped the Great Boa" or went to heaven. He tells of how he saw the angels come for the men.

Mincaye and Steve end up being friends and actually travel together and tell how the Lord worked in both their lives to bring them to this place. The part of the movie that touched me the most was when Steve Saint said this:

"No, my father did not live to see his children or his grand children grow up. But Mincaye was the first of the Waodani to live long enough to see his grandchildren....." That statement really took root in my heart because we each see things from our own point of view....why did THIS happen to me or why did God allow THAT in my life. We...and I will personalize it....I often don't take into account that God is at work everywhere and His picture of things entails more of what I am going through. His plan is greater, wider, and has more impact on the world than my own little part of the world.

Nate Saint, Jim Elliott, Roger Youderian, Pete Fleming, and Ed McCully had no idea that their deaths would play into a whole tribe coming to know Christ, of strength given to the women they left behind, of Life Magazine bringing their story to the world and then, a movie being made of their lives that would touch thousands, maybe millions of life. We just don't think that big...we have no concept of what God has in mind for our lives.

But we know that those angels took those men to God and God allowed the story of EXACTLY what happened that day to be preserved to show us what He did for them and what He continues to do with their story.

What a movie! What a story! What a God!